Hedone Proxzor Impressions

Hedone Proxzor Impressions

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor), OnRPG Journalist

Hedone is a Free-To-Play shooter developed by Acony Games that recently put on its first CB test. I managed to get myself in the closed beta and I decided to try it out! The game takes places in an arena and you are one of the candidates on the show. You are cloned to participate in the arena and battle to the death with all sorts of weapons and objects.

When I loaded up the game and went to the character creation I could choose between male or female, a few different races, and the skin-color. In any RPG that has been released the past few years it is quite common that you can customize your character. Unfortunately I couldn’t customize my character yet and everyone started off with the same appearances and weapons. After I created my character however I went to look up at the item shop to see where I could change my appearance. Inside they offered different clothes and other accessories I could get for my female character, each with different levels and camouflages. Even the camouflages I could unlock in the game were for a specific level so I had to start off with my newbie clothes. Thankfully the clothing has no stats whatsoever so it doesn’t affect the game play in any way.

There are currently two game types that you can choose from to play which are the following:

Team Deathmatch

Team Deathmatch is a known format that is used in many first person shooters. You get placed together in a team and have to fight versus the opposite team. The typical point based system is in place but you can earn bonus points if you manage to take out someone on the other team that is really tearing it up. In this mode I realized that efficient team coordination is vital as you can die incredibly fast in this game if someone catches you from behind.

Dominion

In Dominion there are two teams that have to attack and defend some areas on each turn. Team play is even more important in this matchup since you acquire many points by capturing the area or defending it properly. The maps offer a lot of corners and objects people could sit behind waiting to ambush you, so having multiple eyes looking for campers can make all the difference in successfully capturing an area. This game type is the most fun type though since the objective based winning condition ensures more offensive playstyles.

Gameplay

During the game there will be two shoutcasters describing your match in the arena. They will give comments on your kills, deaths and objectives. This sets the mood for the game as you are supposedly a television reality show star and combined with the strategically placed cameras around the region you can really roleplay the part. I do like this feature of the game because this will keep the action up and it feels like you are really in an arena battling against the other team.

During the matches you can acquire different options such as akimbo style (a pistol in each hand), a healing item that will help you heal an X amount of health points which is very useful if you are running on low health, a blastdrone that will fly to nearby enemies and explode, and a Gattling gun which is similar to the Minigun in most games. These items make the game more fun and awarding during the games, particularly the blastdrone which is incredibly fun to watch in action, so long as it’s on your side. The Gattling Gun however is a little less useful since it requires some time before it actually can fire off bullets which felt pretty counter intuitive to how fast-paced the rest of the game is.

The most fun feature that Acony Games implemented in the game is the quick time event when you are reloading, this quick time event gives you the chance to reload faster if you hit your reload button on the right time. If you fail however your weapon will jam and your character will be confused for a second trying to figure out why the gun is jammed and therefore it’ll take longer to reload. If you are not a fan of quick time events you can let it reload normally and safely, ensuring you never ever jam your weapon which can be quite irritating in the heat of battle. Still though if you want to master the game, quick reloading is a must.

In the GREENroom you can find the options to change your appearance and to change weapons. In the weapons tab you can make presets of weapons so you can quickly choose your preset in a matchup. This will make it easier to bring the right set of tools for every map needed. When you die during the match you can easily pick another preset to fight with which can be really a game changing factor. You can also find the skills tab here to bring different skills in the match that you can obtain by killing and doing the objectives. And the last option you can find in the GREENroom is the Taunt option. This option is the most irritating thing a person can do; basically what it does is when you kill an opponent you can choose to do a taunt. It can get pretty irritating staring at a taunting emote while respawning, but the audience loves it, or so the shoutcasters tell me.

Graphics

Graphics play an important role in Hedone. Every map no matter how diverse always feels like a staged battle arena thanks to flying cameras, rotating cameras, and drop line cameras… so many cameras I can’t get any privacy! However I feel the game is a bit too modern for portraying a semi-futuristic world. To play this good looking shooter made by Acony Games you will need the following specifications:

Minimum Specifications

CPU: Intel Core2 Duo @2.0+Ghz/AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3600+

Graphics: GeForce 7800+/ Radeon x1600+(256MB)

RAM: 1GB

HDD (initial version): 5GB

Recommended Specifications

CPU: QuadCore Intel Core 2 Quad*, 2+ GHz/AMD Athlon II X4*, 6++

Graphics: GeForce 8800+ (512MB)

RAM: 2GB

HDD (initial version): 5GB

If you aren’t really familiar with what kind of machine you have and aren’t familiar with computer specifications, then it’s probably safe to assume that PCs made in the past 4 years will be good to go.

Conclusion

Hedone is a really nice concept that Acony Games decided to make. It has some interesting well designed arenas and the shoutcasters add a nice touch to each match. Personally I did liked the concept but feel it is lacking content to compare to most competitors in the F2P FPS genre like more game types and larger maps. Of course I was in an early test so plenty can change prior to launch. Hedone is potentially a really good FPS but still requires some tweaking and updates before it is released. If you are a big fan of shooters and like the concept of playing in an arena where everything is at stake, I would advise you to try out Hedone when the game hits open beta.